


doppler effect

by galaxyowl



Category: The Umbrella Academy (TV)
Genre: Alternate Universe - Power Swap, Gen, Season/Series 01, don't think too hard about the exact timeline here, idk how to tag warnings for this. canon-typical everything
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-08-30
Updated: 2020-08-30
Packaged: 2021-03-07 01:54:48
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 6,278
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/26189065
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/galaxyowl/pseuds/galaxyowl
Summary: The day of the funeral is going surprisingly smoothly until Klaus falls out of the sky.
Relationships: Klaus Hargreeves/David "Dave" Katz, Number Five | The Boy & Vanya Hargreeves
Comments: 10
Kudos: 160





	doppler effect

The day of the funeral is going surprisingly smoothly until Klaus falls out of the sky.

Ben was staring at the vortex overhead, trying to fathom what in the world it could be, when a human form tumbled out of it, groaning as he impacted the ground.

There was a moment where the rest of them just stared at one another in silence, and then—

“Klaus?” Ben said, the realization hitting.

His brother is disheveled, dressed in the remnants of a military uniform, and a good few years older than the last time Ben saw him.

Klaus Hargreeves has been missing-presumed-dead for thirteen years. Dad took him out for special training one afternoon and he never came back.

Now, Klaus looks up at him and grins, and when Ben offers a hand to help him up he takes it.

“How are you alive?” Luther says.

Klaus looks at Luther, and then the rest of their siblings, as if only just now realizing that they’re there. “Against my better judgement,” he says.

“What happened to you?” Diego says. “Did you…?” Ben assumes the end of that sentence is _time travel_.

“Oh, you know,” Klaus says, as if he’s explaining why he’s a few minutes late and not… this. “Zapped myself to the future, had a pretty terrible time of it, finally made it back in one piece only for my dear, darling siblings to act all affronted about it. Really, I’d think you guys _wished_ I was dead—“

“Klaus,” Ben cuts in. “What _happened_?”

Klaus eyes him silently a moment. Finally, he sighs. “I am _way_ too sober for this. Please tell me no one’s cleared out Dad’s liquor cabinet yet?”

Ben exchanges a look with Diego, but no one stops Klaus as he heads inside and makes his way to the bar.

Klaus pours himself a drink, and gestures with it in has hand as they follow him into the room. “So tell me, gang,” he says, “what year is it?”

Luther scoffs. “You came here without knowing when you were going?”

“What can I say? Time travel’s an art, not a science.” Klaus toys with the dog tags around his neck as he talks. Ben is going to have to ask what’s up with those at some point, but just now he has at least a thousand more pressing questions.

Ben tells him the date, and Klaus groans. “Oh, God _damn_ it.”

“What?” Ben says.

“The apocalypse,” he says.

“ _What_?”

“Y’know. The apocalypse. The end of days. All that jazz.”

“What about it?” Vanya says slowly.

“It’s happening!” Delivered with a grin.

Luther crosses his arms. “Bullshit.”

“Hey, I agree!” He doesn’t seem to notice the alcohol spilling as he swings his hand around. “Not a fan myself.”

“Wait, are you serious?” Ben says. “What kind of apocalypse? What does that—“

Down the hall, a door opens, and someone calls, “Hello?”

Allison had said she’d be arriving late.

She steps into the room. “Allison!” Klaus exclaims, with what sounds like real delight. Then his his gaze lands at the girl at her side. “Who’s the kid?”

***

Allison went back and forth for days on whether or not she should bring Claire with her to the funeral. Once, she got as far as picking up the phone to ask Patrick if he’d take her for the weekend before setting it back down again.

(She and Patrick split a while back, but they’re still on friendly terms, more or less. They’re making the situation work, for Claire’s sake. It isn’t as if the divorce was something messy and explosive; they just realized they weren’t in love anymore.

If they ever were. Sometimes Allison thinks she liked the idea of getting married and settling down more than she ever liked Patrick.)

In the end, she booked a hotel room a few blocks away from the Academy and told Claire that they were going to meet her aunt and uncles. Her daughter was all wide-eyed excitement and youthful energy then, and Allison decided that if even one of her siblings disappointed her she’d never talk to them again.

***

The funeral itself is, predictably, a disaster.

It doesn’t take long afterwards for people to start to disperse. Ben is still kind of just… reeling. Seeing his siblings again is like stepping back into a life he’d been trying his hardest to leave behind. Not to mention the Klaus-shaped elephant in the room.

Ben hadn’t really ever thought he was dead. He also hadn’t thought he’d ever see him again.

Later, after saying goodbyes to Allison and Vanya and Diego—all of whom have places to stay in the city that aren’t the Academy, lucky them—Ben finds Klaus on the couch in the living room. He looks asleep, but he lifts his head as Ben is turning to leave, and Ben stops.

Klaus looks at him. “What can I do for you?”

Ben hovers there a moment. Then he takes a seat.

“How are you, Klaus?” he says. “No bullshit this time.” He doesn’t know what to make of everything Klaus said earlier. He just knows that Klaus kept trailing off mid-sentence, kept avoiding eye contact, kept startling at loud noises.

“I _am_ telling the truth about the apocalypse thing,” he says now, closing his eyes again. “Really would’ve thought you guys’d be more concerned about that one, but who am I to judge?”

“I believe you,” Ben says. “I also think there’s something you’re not telling us.”

Klaus sits up for real. “Like what, oh brother mine?”

Ben hasn’t seen him in years. Maybe he’s imagining the note of sadness in his expression.

“Like what _happened_. Not to the world, we can get to the apocalypse stuff… later.” If Ben tries to wrap his head around that situation just now, he’ll implode. "But what happened to _you_? _”_

Klaus sighs. He goes quiet, and Ben thinks he’s not going to get a real answer, but then he says, very quietly, “I fell in love.”

Okay, Ben had not seen that one coming.

“Please tell me whoever this is is real and not just, like, a department store mannequin you started talking to when the isolation started to get to your head.”

Klaus laughs, which is a win as far as Ben is concerned. He reaches for the dog tags. _Oh._ “He’s real.” A pause. “Was. He was real.”

***

Years ago, Vanya was practicing her violin when footsteps sounded in the hallway.

She did her best to ignore the sound, focussing on the movement of the bow across the strings. Her siblings never wanted to talk to her right when they got back from a mission, anyway.

“Seven?”

She startled so badly she dropped the bow, and spun around to see Five standing in the doorway, clothes torn and bloodied. She hadn’t heard him approaching at all.

“Five,” she said, “what’s—are you okay?”

He didn't respond.

Panic rose in her chest.

Five was hurt. She needed to do something. “I’ll get Mom.” She dropped her violin on the table and started towards the door, but he shook his head.

“You can see me?”

She furrowed her brow. “Of course I can see you. What happened on the mission?”

“I…” Five stared at her.

She brushed past him out into the hallway. “Mom!” she shouted. “Mom, Number Five is hurt!”

Vanya stumbled into the living room only to be greeted by the sight of her siblings and Dad, mid-conversation. Debriefing, she supposed.

All eyes went to her.

“What is the meaning of this outburst, Number Seven?” Dad said.

Vanya shrunk in on herself, rubbing one of her arms self-consciously. “I think Five’s hurt. He needs the infirmary.”

“What the hell, Seven?” Luther said. Klaus _laughed_.

Vanya glanced between the faces of her family. Why were they reacting like this?

“She’s not _wrong_ , is she?” Klaus said.

“That’s not funny,” Allison said.

“I don’t understand,” Vanya whispered.

“Five is dead,” Ben said, his voice flat.

“What? No, he’s not. I just talked to him.”

“Yes, he is!”

Vanya flinched back. “But—“

“Number Seven,” Dad cuts in. “Have you taken your pills today?”

Vanya’s eyes widened. She turned and dashed up the stairs to go find them before Dad could have the chance to yell at her for forgetting.

(She never saw Five’s body. For years, she convinced herself that they were lying about Five’s death, though she couldn’t for the life of her figure out why they would—why not just Dad and Luther but Ben and Allison too would play along with such a cruel trick. Five was gone, yes; Five was missing, sure; but Five was coming back someday. She was sure of it.)

***

The Academy gets attacked. They all make it out basically unscathed.

***

Luther sits himself across from Klaus as he’s eating breakfast at the kitchen table.

“Explain,” he says.

Klaus stares at him. “Explain what?”

“You said the apocalypse happens soon. Explain.”

Klaus drags a hand across his face. “Is it too late to say I was joking about that?”

“If this is a serious threat, we should call a family meeting. This is what Dad trained us for. I wasn’t thinking the other day—the funeral and everything, but—“

“Please,” Klaus says, “just stop talking.”

Luther looks at him.

“If I agree you can call a family meeting,” Klaus says, “will you leave me alone until then?”

***

Vanya left the light on for Five. She left him sandwiches on the counter. Always hoping he would come back.

One night, he did.

A figure flickered at the edge of her vision, just as she was getting up to leave the kitchen, and she turned. “Five?”

She didn’t really believe it was him, even as she said it.

But there was Five, standing in the hallway, staring back at her. “Vanya?” he said, his voice almost as tentative as hers.

“I knew you weren’t dead!” Her voice wobbled as tears threatened her.

He smiled; it didn’t quite reach his eyes. “How are you?”

“Better, now that you’re back.”

“I…” Five takes a breath. “I can’t stay, I don’t think.”

“Why not?”

He hesitated another moment before saying, “Because I _am_ dead, Vanya.”

“No you’re not,” she said. “You’re right here.” She stepped towards him. He flinched away.

Oh. Okay. That was fine, Vanya told herself. Totally fine. All that mattered was that he was back.

“It’s more complicated than that,” he said. “Vanya, you need to—“

A clattering sound. Vanya turned and made eye contact with Allison, on the stairs, recovering from a fall. Vanya couldn’t very well ask what she was doing up past curfew when she was too.

When she looked back at where Five had been, he was gone.

In the morning, when she awoke and assumed the whole incident was a dream, she thought to herself that Five literally showing up and telling her that he really was dead was a little on the nose of her subconscious. Still, she supposed she preferred it to the nightmares she remembered getting when she was younger.

She stopped making the sandwiches.

***

Vanya storms out of the family meeting, Leonard by her side.

(She’d walked into the room to hear Klaus exclaiming that, “No, really! I’ve got nothing! Absolutely nothing! No leads, no mementos of my time there, just—“ And then he’d noticed her, and, well.)

She was an idiot for thinking her family could possibly care. And now she’s stepping out of the Academy doorway, more certain of this fact than ever, and—

“Vanya.”

She stops. The voice came from behind her from, from the direction of the house, but when she turns there’s no one there.

“Are you okay?” Leonard says.

“Hmm?” She looks at him. “Yeah,” she says. “Yeah, sorry, I just, I thought I heard…”

What had she thought she heard? Nothing, definitely. The thing she’d thought is too ridiculous to bear considering.

Because Five is dead. Five is dead, and she’s hearing things.

“Let’s go,” she says.

***

Ben had been the first of them to leave.

The day after they turned eighteen, he packed a bag and got the hell out. He didn’t really have a plan, beyond that. He just knew that Five was dead and Klaus probably was too and he’d be damned if he was going to let that be him next.

Ben moved halfway across the country and got a shitty apartment in the city and an even shittier minimum-wage job and it wasn’t much, really, but it was a life, and it was his.

He did think about using his powers, setting himself up with anything he wanted. But the words seemed to burn his throat on the way out, and he never made it all the way through the sentence without changing his mind.

In the end, he could count the number of times he’d used his ability since leaving the Academy on one hand, each instance seared into his memory in stunning detail. There was the time he managed to lose his wallet and needed a free bus ride back to his apartment. There were a couple times when someone was enough of an asshole at work that he lost patience. And there was the time when he was out getting drinks with friends and the conversation had somehow turned to the topic of—

“Hey, Ben, is your last name really Hargreeves?” Mia said. “Like the Umbrella Academy people?”

“Yeah,” he said, wary of where this might be going.

“Any relation?” She said it like it was a joke.

“Well,” Ben said, slow and considering. Then he went for it. “I actually was in the Umbrella Academy.”

“You’re joking.”

Alex gasped. “No, holy shit, I can totally see it! You’re Number—Number—“ He snapped his fingers.

Ben winced. “Six.”

“Whoa, really?” Mia said. “That’s so cool! I was like, a huge fan as a kid.”

Ben forced a smile. His stomach twisted.

“So, wait, what was it like?” Alex said. “Ben, you _have_ to tell us all your Umbrella Academy stories, this is incredible.“

“Oh my god, yes.” Mia grinned. “What was Number One like? I always thought he was cute.”

“I…“ Ben said. “I heard a rumor that you don’t remember talking about this.” And then, because Dad always taught them to be thorough, “I heard a rumor none of you think I have anything to do with the Umbrella Academy.”

Mia blinked a few times as her brain adjusted her to this new reality. “Funny coincidence,” she said. “Hargreeves. Hm.”

“Yeah,” Ben said, not meeting her eyes. “Funny.”

***

Vanya stops in the hallway at the Icarus as she catches sight of a familiar face. “Helen,” she says. “You’re… back?”

Disappointment flashes through her at the realization that this means the first chair position probably isn’t actually open. What the hell was that audition she just did, then?

Helen turns and looks at her, and there is blood streaked across her chest. Vanya stumbles backwards into the wall.

“Vanya,” Helen says, an intensity to her voice that is altogether new. “Vanya, listen, he killed me. He killed me. Do you know what I’m saying? No, you don’t, do you? A mediocre violinist and mediocre medium.” She laughs.

“Helen,” Vanya says, “are you okay? I can—I can call an ambulance—“

“He killed me!” Helen shrieks, and reaches out to—what, to grab her? Her hand goes straight through Vanya like she’s made of mist.

Vanya scrambles away.

When she gets home she calls Leonard and sobs her way through telling him about it.

***

Rumor has it that Allison Hargreeves does all her own stunts.

***

Vanya sits on the edge of the dock, staring out at the lake. Fireflies flicker in the distance.

She still doesn’t really understand why Leonard insisted they should come out here to investigate her powers ( _her powers_ ; the phrase still rings ridiculous), but she isn’t complaining.

It’s late. She’s only out here because she couldn’t get to sleep.

“Hey,” says a voice, and Five sits down beside her.

She doesn’t turn to look at him. For some reason she’s sure that if she does he’ll disappear into the night air.

“Hey,” she says. Keeps her gaze fixed on the water. “Are you real?”

“You can see me,” he says. Not a question.

“I guess.” She pauses. “I don’t think you are real. I mean, you’re _dead_ , Five. I’m… I don’t know, hallucinating? I stopped taking my meds and now I’m having some kind of nervous break?” She’s pretty sure that isn’t how any of that works, but she doesn’t really know. It _sounds_ plausible. Certainly more plausible than the idea that she’s having a conversation with her dead brother.

“Come on, Vanya,” Five says. “Our siblings all have powers that defy the known laws of physics, and you think ghosts are so far outside believability?”

“I…” It’s not an unfair point. It’s also too good to be true.

And if Five is here, why only now? Why not all of those years when she was scared and alone?

“Vanya,” he says, “you need to know—“

She risks turning to look at him.

Five is right there, sitting next to her, no older than the day he died.

“Five,” she says, her voice cracking. “God, I—you’re really here?”

“I’m really here,” he says.

She reaches out a hand, but it passes right through his shoulder. He grimaces. “For a relative value of ‘here,’ I suppose.”

“How?” She hates how small her voice sounds.

“How am I here? That’s a complicated question; I think it might be something to with parallel planes or dark matter, but I haven’t quite cracked it yet, since—“ He breaks off. “Not important. The reason you can see me, Vanya, you and no one else—“ He studies her for a moment, quiet. “It’s because you have powers.”

She takes approximately thirty seconds to process this, and then bursts out laughing. “He was right.”

“Who was?”

“Leonard,” she says. “He’s my…” She doesn’t know how to end that sentence. “His grandmother owns this house.” She nods towards the building.

“Huh,” Five says. He stands, and Vanya follows suit. There’s an expression on Five’s face she can’t quite read. “I’m going to go… look around.”

“What? Why?”

“Just—“

“Vanya?” Leonard’s voice cuts through the darkness like a blade. “What are you doing awake?”

“I couldn’t sleep,” she says, stepping towards him.

“Were you talking to someone?”

She can’t possibly admit that she was talking with her long-dead brother. But then, Leonard was the one who’d brought up the idea of these visions she’s been having being ghosts, in the first place. If she can’t trust him, who can she trust? “Yeah,” she says. “You were right.”

“A ghost?”

She nods. “My brother.”

“Oh,” he says. “Wow.” A beat. “Is he still here?”

“Yeah, he’s—“ She glances back towards Five, but he’s gone. “Never mind.”

Leonard starts saying something about how he’s proud of her, how incredible this is, but she’s just staring at the spot where Five had been standing.

After a little while, Leonard puts a hand on her shoulder. Vanya tenses. “You should get some sleep,” he says.

She nods. Her gazes flicks towards the house again.

Five stumbles out of the door. “Vanya,” he says, skidding to a stop in front of her, “you need to leave.”

“What?”

“I didn’t say anything,” Leonard says.

“I should have been paying closer attention,” Five is saying, “should have put this together sooner. I didn’t realize…”

“Five, you’re not making any sense.”

“Did he tell you he has a journal that belongs to Dad? And that’s how he’s getting all this information?”

The wind picks up. Vanya takes a step back. “I don’t believe you.”

“Don’t be ridiculous. Why would I lie to you?”

“I…”

“Vanya?” Leonard says. “What is it?”

Vanya looks between the two of them. “Is that true?” she says to Leonard.

“Is what true?”

“He killed that violinist,” Five says, far too casually.

“ _What_?” He can’t have just said that. He can’t mean it. It can’t be true.

Unless it is.

“Vanya, tell me what’s going on,” Leonard says.

“Did you kill her?” Vanya whispers.

Something like shock passes across Leonard’s face before it settles into something darker. “I did that for you,” he says. The trees on the lakeshore rattle, sending leaves swirling down around them.

“I’m leaving,” she tells Leonard, taking a shaky step away from the dock.

She came here in his car. New plan. “I’m going to go call someone.” Who, she has no idea.

She takes another step away. Leonard grabs her by the arm. A bolt of terror runs through her as she turns and looks back at him, trying to find the gentle man she’s fallen for buried under the anger on his face.

“Let me go, Leonard,” she says.

River stones and broken branches lift into the air in a maelstrom, and Vanya glances towards Five as his eyes ice begin to ice over with white.

Somehow, Leonard looks at him too.

He yanks her towards him. Vanya strains away.

A piece of wood swings through the air and impacts his chest, and Leonard crumples to the ground.

Vanya screams.

***

Allison is woken at five in the morning by a phone call that turns out to be a vaguely incoherent Vanya—something about Leonard, and _Five_ , and “he’s dead, oh my God, he’s dead.”

“Vanya,” she says. “What do you need?”

Silence, and then: “Can you come pick me up? I’m sorry, I’m sorry, I know it’s really late, it’s just that I already called the house earlier and no one picked up and I don’t know what’s going to happen if I stay here and—and—“

“Okay,” she says, because she doesn’t know what else to do.

This would be simpler if she didn’t have Claire with her. She can’t think clearly, doesn’t have any real ideas, but she can’t leave Claire alone and she certainly can’t take her with her and this is how she finds herself pulling up to the Academy with a vague intention of asking one of her siblings to watch her daughter for an hour or so while she goes to get Vanya.

The first person she finds in the house is Grace.

And it wouldn’t be her first choice necessarily, but. Well.

She was _designed_ for childcare, right?

“Mom?” Allison says as she approaches where Grace is sitting.

Her mom smiles that artificial smile at her. “What is it, dear?”

“Could you watch Claire for me, for just a bit?”

“Claire?”

“My daughter,” Allison says, hugging Claire against her side. Claire stares up at Grace with wide eyes.

Mom laughs. “I know that.”

Maybe this wasn’t such a good idea, after all. “Right,” she says instead. “So that’s a yes? Sorry, I wouldn’t do this normally, it’s just that Vanya called and she sounded kind of freaked out and…”

She doesn’t know why she’s explaining. She’s fairly certain Mom isn’t able to understand that level of nuance, but, well, it’s hard to really know. Every time Allison looks at the woman who raised her there’s a horrible kind of double-vision: the mother who told Allison that she loved her, who knew all her favorite foods by heart, whose shoulder she’d cried into when she came back from a mission battered and bruised; and the robot, the shell of an idea of a parent that she was forced to find comfort in because she had no other option.

She _wants_ Grace to be able to Claire’s grandmother. That’s what scares her.

“Of course, Allison.” Grace smiles again.

Allison smiles back at her. She lets go of Claire and leans down to her eye level. “Okay, sweetheart. I’m gonna be back real soon. You be good for—“

Patrick’s parents had visited shortly after Claire had been born, back when they were still together. The four of them talked and laughed and had a whole conversation about what name Claire was going to call her grandparents by.

Allison had never had any intention of ever introducing Claire to Reginald Hargreeves. Most of the time, she tried her best not to think about the family she grew up with. This particular question hadn’t occurred to her.

“You be good,” she repeats. She tries and fails to catch Grace’s eye. “Thanks again, Mom,” she says softly.

And then she turns and leaves, before she can change her mind.

***

Vanya is sitting, back on the dock, curled in on herself.

“For whatever it’s worth,” Five says, “I didn’t mean to.”

She looks at him.

“My powers have been, shall we say, _inactive_ , for the last seventeen years. I need to do the calculations again, figure out the frequencies—I don’t know if any of them have shifted now that I’m…”

That makes sense. Vanya can’t bring herself to care.

Footsteps approach.

“Vanya? Oh my God.“ Allison steps towards her. “What happened?”

Vanya looks up. That's right, she’d called Allison, after Five had insisted she couldn’t stay here. After they’d gotten rid of the body.

How can she even begin to explain what’s happened?

“You wouldn’t believe me if I told you.”

Allison crouches down, so they’re face-to-face, and puts a hand on her shoulder. “Try me,” she says softly.

Vanya swallows. Her gaze lingers on Five, who watches them in silence. “It was Five.”

Allison starts, removing her hand. “What?”

“Five killed him.” _I killed him. It’s only because of me Five could do that._

Allison’s face does several different things in quick succession. “Vanya,” she says, “Five is dead.”

Vanya glances towards Five. When he’d explained it to her, it had made so much sense. Bu now he doesn’t meet her gaze.

“I know,” Vanya says, only it comes out something like a sob. “I know, and he’s been dead for so long, but he’s—he’s here, Allison, and I can see him, I have powers! I have powers and Five is right here and I would have been able to see him this whole time if I wasn’t—if Dad hadn’t—and he—and Leonard—“

There are tears on her face, and all she can think about is how young Five was when he died, which really only adds to the absurdity of this whole situation, because it doesn’t make sense to mourn her brother now, not when he’s been dead for so long, not now he’s finally back.

“Hey, hey, hey,” Allison murmurs, putting an arm around Vanya. “It’s gonna be okay.”

Vanya tries to wipe the tears away with a hand. “Since when do you even care, anyways?” Allison winces, and she regrets the words as soon as they’re out of her mouth.

“You’re my sister,” Allison says firmly. “I care about you.”

Vanya still isn’t sure if she believes her, but she thinks that she wants to start trying to.

***

“Number Four,” Dad said, “I believe you are ready to attempt time travel.”

He and Klaus stood in the Academy courtyard. Klaus leaned against a wall with a feigned air of casualness that melted into sheer bafflement at his father’s words. “What?”

“You heard me.”

“Yeah, no, I heard you, I just didn’t understand what you said.”

“Your skill with your powers are advancing very well—despite your best efforts, it would seem—and I believe it is time for you to attempt use them to traverse not just space, but time. Do you need me to repeat myself a third time, or have I made myself clear?” His voice was drenched with a detached disdain.

Klaus, at seventeen years old, was past caring. “Why in the world do you think I can time travel?”

“That’s not necessary for you to know. You simply have to do it.”

“Not interested.”

“Number Four!” Reginald shouted, and Klaus flinched.

“Okay, okay, okay.” He took a breath. “Time travel.”

Dad nodded.

“You want me to just… try do it? Like, here, right now?”

“I would rather you didn’t waste any more of my time, yes.”

“Well, if I succeed then I can just come back in time and make sure of that.” Klaus grinned. Reginald watched him, stern-faced, unblinking.

Klaus reached for his powers. For a moment he considered just teleporting away and escaping this situation entirely, but that was a temporary solution at best and Dad would be angry. So. Not going to try that. Instead he grabbed at the part of his mind where his powers lived and pushed to the left, sort of. Just off-track—because, yes, he could see it now, clearly, all he had to do was step a little differently—

Klaus vanished, and reappeared years later in a pile of smoldering ruins.

(He didn’t know how long he spent wandering the apocalyptic wasteland, the image of his siblings’ dead bodies burned into his mind. Years, certainly, but frankly he stopped counting the days after the first like, ten, so it was hard to get an exact count.

And then. Well.

The Commission changed everything.)

***

Ben has always hated his powers.

No, that’s not quite it.

Ben has always been deeply, existentially terrified of his powers.

Because it’s wrong, isn’t it? Even as a kid he had a vague sense that there was something wrong with just making people do things.

And because: there’s no way it’s those particular words that do it, right? _I heard a rumor._ It can’t just be, like, a magic spell. Which means that it must be about intent, which means that, really, Ben could be rumoring anybody, at any time, without even being aware of it. Any good thing in his life could be something he’s stolen.

He has no proof of this fact. That didn’t stop it from keeping him up at night as child, this idea, this eldritch beast of a possibility he kept spinning through his mind.

Now, as Allison explains to the group everything that Vanya has learned recently, Ben leans against the nearest piece of furniture, horror creeping through him.

“Ben,” Diego says. “You okay there?”

Ben looks up. “Dad made me rumor her,” he says. “Made me make her forget.”

“Well, fuck,” Klaus says, after a moment.

***

“Klaus,” Vanya says. “Do you know someone named Dave?”

She is standing in the door to Klaus’ bedroom, posture tensed, her expression looking like—well, like she’s just seen a ghost.

“What?” Klaus says.

She chews on her lip. “What’s your last name?” she says to the empty air beside her.

Klaus mentally rewinds through the day’s dramatic reveals. Vanya. Powers. Ghosts. Five.

Dave.

It can’t be. The universe is never that kind.

“Dave Katz?” Vanya says, as casual as if just hearing name doesn’t tear Klaus’ heart to shreds.

She is looking at him. Waiting for an answer, he realizes belatedly.

“Yes,” he says. “I know him.” He’s echoing her use of the present tense. He doesn’t correct himself.

She takes a deep breath. “He had some things he wanted to tell you.”

***

Klaus started working for the Commission.

He was good at it, was the thing. Was the worst part. Apparently, decade and a half of superhero training, some of it does actually stick. Who’d have thought?

He was good at it, while he was doing it. He was less good at living with it after. So he… problem-solved. Found ways to keep the ghosts away, so to speak.

He’d snuck out of the academy, sometimes, when he was younger. Teleportation was convenient for that. He’d gone and gotten a little too drunk, sometimes. Now, Klaus gave himself a whirlwind tour of all the ways humankind had invented over the course of history to get themselves fucked up. (Hint: there’s a lot of them.)

Klaus’ last job for the Commission was in Vietnam, in 1968.

It should have been a simple one. Plenty of stray bullets in the air; no one would have noticed one extra. But the entry coordinates on his briefcase were wonky, or something, and he flashed into existence in the middle of an encampment, and he was staring his target right in the face, and then—

Every day he told himself he was going to do it. Every day he found another excuse. He ignored the messages from headquarters, and they let him, because he was one of their top operatives and they assumed he knew what he was doing. And then one day he was looking at Dave, the colored lights of the dance club reflecting in his eyes, and he knew he was never going to do it at all.

(The war did it for him, of course.

He made the jump home right then and there, because at that point he wasn’t sure he cared if he screwed it up again.)

***

Raindrops freeze mid-fall. The cars in the streets, too, the people on the sidewalk. Time around Klaus stops.

Huh.

The Handler steps out from behind a nearby building.

“You’re a difficult man to track down, you know that, Mr. Hargreeves?”

He can’t be that hard to track, if she’s found him. “I’ll take that as a compliment.”

She gives the textbook definition of a polite chuckle as she crosses the street towards him. “Now,” she says. “I hope you understand why I’m here.”

“Care to enlighten me?”

“We can’t just let you go about stopping the apocalypse,” she says. “I hope you understand that.”

Klaus hadn’t really felt like he’d been particularly making strides in the whole “stopping the apocalypse” thing, but okay. “So, what? You’re here to ask me ask me really nicely to stop?”

“I’m here to find out what it’ll take to get you back on our payroll.”

He doesn’t say that he’s pretty sure they were never paying him, exactly.

What he does say is, “Dave.”

She raises an eyebrow. “I’m afraid I’m not acquainted.”

“David Katz,” Klaus says. “You ordered his death in 1968.”

“Oh!” She grins. “Oh, I do remember hearing about this.” She clicks her tongue. “Really, Hargreeves, falling for your mark? It’s so cliché.”

“Yeah,” Klaus says, “a time-traveling assassin with addiction issues and a closeted soldier from the ‘60s, tale as old time.”

“Yes, well.” She waves a hand. “I think that should be doable. I can have someone extract him from the timeline. So you accept?”

This shouldn’t be this easy. But, but, but. “You’ll save him?”

“If you like.”

“I can see him again?” His voice breaks. Embarrassing. When isn’t he?

“I’ll have it all arranged.”

“Fine,” he says.

The Handler opens her briefcase and whisks them away, and it's at this point he realizes he’s failed to bargain for his family’s safety.

***

Eudora Patch gets sent out to investigate a dead body that washed up on the shore of a lake just outside the city.

***

At first, Klaus does sincerely mean to make a go of it. Commission, take two. Maybe that makes him a terrible person. He’s past caring at this point.

The Handler promises someone is going to retrieve Dave. Empty promises, probably, but there’s nothing he can do about that.

No, the doubt that blooms in his mind is of a different kind. It’s the memory of the half-conversation he had the other night, with Dave’s ghost. The things that were said. The realization that if Dave gets pulled from the timeline before he dies, none of that will ever happen. The thought Vanya, little quiet Vanya, using her _power_ to bring them together.

He finds a way back to her, in the end.

***

Hazel has been having a _week_.

The details of which are not important right now. What is important is that Cha-Cha’s research has finally yielded something useful, namely the fact that someone has recently purchased a ticket for an orchestra performance under Klaus Hargreeves’ name.

It’s not much of a lead, but it’s better than nothing. They’ll swing by and see how the music is.

***

All of the Hargreeves siblings wind up at Vanya’s show. Not out of any kind of familial affection, but because Diego somehow gets word of an attack happening, and Klaus realizes that, shit, that’s probably his fault, isn’t it, and then they are in the fancy theater with bullets flying through the air.

And then, cutting through the sound of the bullets and the sound of the music and the sound of the orchestra players dropping their instruments in a panic, is a voice that Klaus has not heard in years and years and years.

Five screams Vanya’s name, and it’s louder than anything Klaus has ever heard.

The whole world trembles with the energy, and then Five’s ghostly form is scrambling forward, still shouting, and the sound of it is a white-hot glow, and Klaus isn’t really sure what’s happening but the next thing he knows the moon is splitting open and he knows. This is the way the world ends.

Klaus laughs, ignoring the looks his siblings give him. It shouldn’t be funny, probably, except that it is. Klaus’ life is one big Mobius strip of a joke that starts with him jumping to the future and ends here.

“Klaus?” Ben says, and, fuck. This isn’t just Klaus’ death, and it’s not just the world in some abstract sense. It’s dust and rubble pouring down from the ceiling, it’s the night sky overhead, it’s Ben’s worried face, it’s Five’s terrified scream.

Klaus gathers his siblings together, and looks around at them, and says, “I think that maybe I can get us out of here. Everyone got their seatbelt on?” and the Hargreeves siblings disappear in a flash of blue as the world ends around them.

**Author's Note:**

> i wrote this out of order and don't have a beta so i have no idea if it's uhhhh coherent? but i hope you enjoyed anyways
> 
> you can come shout about tua with me on tumblr & twitter @confusedbluesky


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